The covetous I likewise found to be a very wakeful people. I happened to come into a room where one of them lay sick. His physician and his wife were in close whisper near his bedside. I overheard the doctor say to the poor gentlewoman, "He cannot possibly live till five in the morning." She received it like the mistress of a family prepared for all events. At the same instant came in a servant-maid, who said, "Madam, the undertaker is below according to your order." The words were scarce out of her mouth, when the sick man cried out with a feeble voice, "Pray, doctor, how went bank-stock to-day at 'Change?" This melancholy object made me too serious for diverting myself further this way: but as I was going home, I saw a light in a garret, and entering into it, heard a voice crying, "And, hand, stand, band, fanned, tanned." I concluded him by this, and the furniture of his room, to be a lunatic; but upon listening a little longer, perceived it was a poet, writing an heroic upon the ensuing peace.
It was now towards morning, an hour when spirits, witches, and conjurers are obliged to retire to their own apartments, and feeling the influence of it, I was hastening home, when I saw a man had got half way into a neighbour's house. I immediately called to him, and turning my ring, appeared in my proper person. There is something magisterial in the aspect of the Bickerstaffs, which made him run away in confusion.
As I took a turn or two in my own lodging, I was thinking, that, old as I was, I need not go to bed alone, but that it was in my power to marry the finest lady in this kingdom, if I would wed her with this ring. For what a figure would she that should have it make at a visit, with so perfect a knowledge as this would give her of all the scandal in the town? But instead of endeavouring to dispose of myself and it in matrimony, I resolved to lend it to my loving friend the author of the "Atalantis,"[161] to furnish a new Secret History of Secret Memoirs.
[160] Iago's words ("Othello," act iii. sc. 3) are, "There are a kind of men so loose of soul that in their sleeps will mutter their affairs; one of this kind is Cassio."
[161] Mrs. Manley (see Nos. 35 and 63). In the dedication prefixed to her play of "Lucius" (1717), Mrs. Manley made public apology for the attacks upon Steele in her earlier writings: "I have not known a greater mortification than when I have reflected upon the severities which have flowed from a pen which is now, you see, disposed as much to celebrate and commend you."
